Students can experience the art of Ohio-based photographers as they captured COVID-19 in the ‘Chronicles: The Great Depression and the Pandemic’ exhibition through this Friday, Oct. 4. The hours of the exhibit are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Emily Davis Gallery at Folk Hall.
In the exhibition, students can see the pandemic through the eyes of another historical event that greatly impacted previous generations: The Great Depression.
The photographers featured are Autumn Bland, Donal Black, Jr., Angelo Merendino, Jane Alden Stevens, and Shane Wynn. Bland and Wynn are both University of Akron alumni.
The exhibition aims to contextualize the life students experienced during the pandemic with the help of a style of photography created by artists experiencing their own difficulties.
The exhibition was curated by Dr. Christine Fowler Shearer and Arnold Tunstall.
“There wasn’t much seen of COVID,” Tunstall said. “And I wanted to represent as much as I could with five individuals.” Just like with the photographs taken during the Great Depression, the photographs from the exhibition show what hardships people were experiencing day-to-day.
Tunstall explained the creation of the Depression-era style. During the Great Depression, the government paid photographers to go around the country
to photograph people in their everyday lives. From that, a style of photography was born.
That style has inspired photographers ever since. The photographs shown in the exhibition are matched with photographs from the Depression, helping students connect the two.
Speaking about the COVID-19 pandemic, Tunstall said, “There’s a lot of things happening. When it’s happening it’s hard to know what’s important.”
Rather than focusing on the global impact, this exhibition gives viewers the opportunity to look back on how COVID impacted Ohio.
“A lot of the news about the pandemic was either political or sort of medical and not about community or our town,” Tunstall said.
The exhibition, free and open to the public, is through Friday, Oct. 4 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Emily Davis Gallery in Folk Hall at 150 E. Exchange St. Akron, OH 44325.
This story was written as part of the Newswriting Across the Media course in The UA School of Communication.
